TU Delft welcomes slightly fewer international students

At Dutch universities, there were 220 fewer first-year international bachelor students starting than last year. This is according to the final enrolment figures of Universities of the Netherlands (UNL). These final figures indicate there are 18,594 of them. They represent 31 percent of the total intake.

The number of international first-year bachelor students also decreased in Delft. According to the latest figures from TU Delft Data Insights (reference date December), 704 international students enrolled, 38 fewer than last year. These students account for 20 percent of the total first-year bachelor intake.

Master’s programmes

The Master’s programmes are also seeing a decrease nation-wide, but only for the internationals that came to the Netherlands specifically to do their Master’s. There are 1,700 fewer of those than last year.

At TU Delft, the number of first-year international master’s students dropped from 1,479 in 2022/2023 to 1,296 in 2023/2024. These students account for 84 percent of the total first-year master’s intake.

Overall, 2 in 5 TU Delft students out of all first-year students are from abroad this year.

Unrest

“It would appear the discontinuation of recruitment abroad and warnings about limited student housing are bearing fruit”, says Jouke de Vries, President of Universities of the Netherlands.

For years there has been unrest in the House of Representatives because of the anglicisation of higher education and the influx of foreign students. The minister is preparing a bill on the subject and agreed with the universities that they would stop recruiting.

Nation-wide, the Bachelor’s programmes have drawn eight hundred fewer first-years than last year. But the number of students starting a Master’s programme has actually increased by two percent, to 52.5 thousand. International students account for 33 percent.